Tuesday, July 12, 2011

The Moon was Red

We're shambling along on our Ace Fest-- but suddenly our zombie shamble turns into more of a thundering stomp as the giant monsters arrive! This is another wild 'n weird one from the May 1953 issue of Web of Mystery #18, and as usual, the ever mindblowing Lou Cameron completely out does himself with stunning visuals and a tremendous amount of eye-poppin', gory detail, (even if today's snarling high seas horror does look like something right out of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack.)

10 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Didn't really like this; (the monster was *too* cheesy for my tastes!) I mean; what were those markings all over its body? Spots like a cheetah/leopard/jaguar? Did it have measles or chicken pox? Suckers like an octopus or squid? (And I know this was a different time; don't get after me...) but, given that harpoon gun and the fact that Ferdenade's father owned a whaler; but I'm guessing nobody in that family was exactly a big fan of French Greenpeace!:) )

(Also sorry I've been out of circulation; but we had a *big* windstorm here yesterday in South Bend, Indiana and a *lot of people are still without power*!)

Hum. I absolutely loved every panel of this. Course, Cavin men are seafarin' men, after all. I really appreciated the monster's sort of kooky look--those are fish spots, DBurch--especially in the panel where the old man's climbing up his wild face with a hatchet in his hands. I appreciate the attention to maritime detail here too. I mean, that splash was just as badass as an old-school Russian sailor's prison tattoo.

I have a feeling Cameron was maybe using some old timey / ancient monster reference for this one, (possibly a stylized creature from an old map or woodcut) but with his usual unique spin on it, as normally in his stories everything is consistant with the details on a much more realistic level. I still enjoy the Hell out of this story as well, panels 1 and 4 on page 7 "CHOMP! CHOMP!" are truly spectacular, and in previous posts I'm pretty sure I've already spilled my heart out about Cameron's superb use of silhouettes... he shines here with it as well.

I, for one, loved this story, but then again I'm just a sucker for sailor's yarn. The art, of course, was gorgeous, even if the monsters looked a bit silly. The last panel of page 3 actually reminded me a bit of one of William Blake's The Great Red Dragon paintings.

May I humbly request more stories with Lou Cameron art and/or high sea horrors?

>using a different way to attain a goal...what works and what does not.

Zactly, Turok. Kudos to the positive thoughts, I know I'm occasionally guilty of raggin' on some of these stories too, but I really do prefer to hear what people LIKE about these posts over what people don't like... after all, it is an APPRECIATION blog (I didn't start this thing for it to turn into some lame ass MST3K spin-off to just poke fun at everything, which I hate.)

NEXT UP: More Lou Cameron High Seas Horror! Just joking... wait, no I'm not!

I enjoyed how the writer pulled French-sounding names out of his butt. The village, “jean des pres”, is actually a person’s name. “Jean Despres” or “Jean Desprez” are fairly common names. I laughed out loud at “Toule”, a wholly made-up “sounds French to me” name, possibly inspired by Toulouse?

Funniest line is “You speak like an old woman, Fernande!” because, in fact, Fernande is a woman’s name. The male name would be “Fernand”, with no “e” at the end.

And I always enjoy “scare bleu”, which is American shorthand for “I said sacre bleu, so I must be French!”. It’s an obscure and ancient expression not uttered aloud by any French person since the days of Marie-Antoinette.

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